Televerket was the name of the Swedish and Norwegian government agencies for telecommunications.

1 July 1993, the Swedish Televerket was in accordance with the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen's, decision made into a corporation, Telia AB, thus making Sweden the first European country to deregulate its telecom market. However, it shall be noted that Telia maintained their monopoly on the Swedish telecom market for many years to come. The name Televerket is nowadays used, by supporters of the deregulated system, in a degrading way when referring to Telia. Worth of notice is that old telephone poles and such are still marked with the Televerket logo. Telia has since merged with the Finnish Sonera, and is now known as TeliaSonera.

In 1994, the Norwegian Televerket was turned into a state owned joint stock company. It changed its name to Telenor the following year. In 1998 the telecom market was completely opened and deregulated. Following this, Telia created a Norwegian division and became one of Telenor's competitors. It wasn't until 2000 that Telenor was partly privatized.

It is interesting to note that a fusion between Telenor and Telia was planned in the latter half of the nineties, but this merge was cancelled 16 December 1999. Rumours have it that Telenor and TeliaSonera are currently (as of late 2004) negotiating about a new fusion.

External links

• Telia (http://www.telia.se)
• Telenor (http://www.telenor.com/)
• TeliaSonera (http://www.teliasonera.com)
• The Swedish Televerket's logotype (http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dat95jed/images/logos/televerket.jpg) (quite large file-size)